How Telephone Answering Services Improve Customer Service

Can’t you just imagine a customer rolling their eyes and sighing when they call a business and an automated response picks up? It puts them in a bad mood or makes it even worse if they were calling to complain about a product or service. You don’t want to be that business. A telephone answering service with a live person on the other end gives customers a much better impression of your company.

Image Credit: answermti.com

Make a Good First Impression
Small businesses often cannot afford to hire full-time receptionists or customer service agents and end up handing the calls off to full-time staff as part of their jobs. When a new customer calls in, they may get a busy signal, be put on hold, or even be hung up on by a frantic staff member trying to manage multiple tasks at one time.

If the potential customer does get put through to a live person, that employee is often busy and distracted and unable to answer the questions. The potential customer is left feeling dissatisfied and frustrated and often looking for another company that does the same thing.

Instead, if you work with a qualified telephone answering service, the scenario is quite different. The telephone answering service answers the call politely and asks how he or she can help the person. They listen to the person’s question or concern and then provide a response. Even if they don’t know the answer, they can tell the person they will look into the matter and give them a callback.

Feeling Heard
Customers that call in with complaints expect to be listened to. An agent with an answering service can listen to the complaint, ask questions, and give a professional response letting the customer know they will get back with them in a certain time frame. The customer feels like someone listened to them and that they are working on the issue.

When Do You Need an Answering Service?
Many small businesses can benefit from hiring a service to handle customer calls. It gives them a professional image while freeing up staff to take care of other work. An answering service may even be important for after-hours calls if you are concerned that they have to wait until the next business day. In certain industries, that may be a sale lost.

An answering service also makes it easier to deal with customer calls and complaints. Instead of being put on the spot, once you receive information about the call, you can research the issue and go back to the customer with a well-thought-out response. An answering service makes the customer feel important because taking care of them is the sole focus of their day. Unlike employees, they are not trying to balance multiple tasks and are not distracted. This shows in their attitude and tone of voice, which makes the customer feel that they are being treated as important and being heard.

A telephone answering service can be beneficial to businesses of all sizes and in many industries. While the reasons may change, the results are often the same: improved customer service that results in satisfied customers who remain loyal to your company.

Share with us your views about this post, how the telephone answering services improve your service? Which answering services you are using?